Hey!

Hey! This is Vasundhara Sharma. I am doing Economics from Hans Raj College and the focus of my project is on exploring alternative market structures in the judiciary. The point of my project is not to highlight the causes and reasons behind the inefficiency prevailing in the judicial system, nor is it to emphasise the flaws in the system and recommend policy reforms. I want to question the rationale behind public provision of law.

There exists no market for justice as it is largely taken to be a public good. But in many cases such as commercial or trade disputes, and particularly Lok Adalats, where cases are amicably settled and decisions taken are consented by both the parties, adjudication is a private good. Asking the taxpayer to pay his hard earned money for mediating the conflict between two arbitrary parties, both of which agree on a common decision, which is tailor-made and hence sets no precedents for him or the rest of the country, is preposterous.

Of course, arguments in favour and against the entire idea are plenty. My focus is on how we can allow arbitration and other alternative dispute resolution mechanisms to come up in a big way so that there is lesser backlog of cases, less corruption in the judicial markets, and courts can focus on priority cases. I wanted to see if privatisation of some aspects of the judicial process is the solution, and if it is, is the idea feasible. Particularly I wanted to focus on the commercial, corporate and trade dispute aspects and see if we can allow arbitral tribunals to come up in a much bigger way in order to ease the current backlog.

I was also wondering if the idea of outsourcing Lok Adalats to private enterprises would help make justice accessible to the poor, and to those whose cases are strong, rather than the current system which tends to be biased towards those who are politically and financially strong.

Would love your feedback.

Vasundhara.